Of the many books which Robert Louis Stevenson planned and discussed with
his friends in his correspondence there is none, perhaps, which would have
been more valued than the biography of William Hazlitt. Whenever Stevenson
refers to Hazlitt, whether in his essay on "Walking Tours" or in his
letters, he makes one wish he would say more. This is what he writes to
Mr. Hammerton:
_"I am in treaty with Bentley for a Life of Hazlitt; I hope it will
not fall through as I love the subject, and appear to have found a
publisher who loves it also. That, I think, makes things more
pleasant. You know I am a fervent Hazlittite; I mean regarding him as
the English writer who has had the scantiest justice. Besides which,
I am anxious to write biography; really, if I understand myself in
quest of profit, I think it must be good to live with another man
from birth to death. You have tried it, and know."_
If the qualification of a biographer is to understand his subject,
Stevenson may be said to have been well qualified to write on Hazlitt. Mr.
Leslie Stephen has given us a fine critical estimate of Hazlitt the
writer, and the late Mr. Ireland's prefatory memoir to his admirable
selection from the Essays, with its enforced limitations, is an excellent
piece of biographical condensation, but the life of the essayist has yet
to be written. The subject has been tried by many others, but no one has
quite captured the spirit of Hazlitt. Had the details of Hazlitt's life,
with his passionate hates and loves, been told by himself in the manner of
his beloved Rousseau, he might have produced a book which for interest
would have rivalled the _Confessions_, but failing such a work one must
deplore that Stevenson was not encouraged to write on the subject.
_I. R., in London Academy._